when they said the administration lied about who was behind the attacks in benghazi, libya, senator john kerry called for rice to stay on. the republican party has severed ties with a virginia based consulting group it has paid $3 million to this year alone. the group is being investigated for voter fraud in nine counties in florida. right now, my story of the week. the republican bubble trap. if you follow politics, you've probably noticed that polling of the presidential election has swung quite decidedly in the president's favor over the last couple of weeks. the real clear politics polling average now has obama up 4.1 points over mitt romney in national poles. nate silver's prediction model put barack obama's odds of winning the election above 80% for the first time ever. swing state polling just this week seems to confirm the trend. a new quinnipiac "new york times" cbs poll shows surprisingly strong leads for the president. the galup tracking poll shows obama up six points. it's pretty hard to survey the polling data and not come to the conclusion that barack obama is beating mitt